WE NEED TO TALK

Me kōrero ngātahi tātou

About Our Place | Ngā kaupapa o tā tātou kainga

We’re starting to look long term, into the next 10-30 years, and we asked what’s important to you.

Thanks for telling us what you think, and voting for your top 10 aspirations we should focus on achieving.

We summarised your feedback into general themes which we’ll use to help guide our overall direction.

We’ll use your more specific feedback during our long term planning, and check in with you again in early 2021 to make sure we’re still on track. If you want to stay in the loop, be sure to sign up for our e-newsletter.

What’s next? | Hei muri

We’ll tally the votes and let you know what came out on top. The top results will guide our direction and provide us with a vision of where we hope to be in the future.

In the meantime, below is a summary of what you told us.

Our place is a place where…

You want less heavy vehicles in towns, damaging our roads and making them unsafe for motorists and people on bikes. Accessible on-street parking, and wheel-friendly kerbing and footpaths to keep people safe from passing vehicles. Wider bridges, more safety signs, and safety barriers. Lighting for pedestrian safety and to help motorists see at night. You want lower speed limits, more speed monitoring, and traffic calming measures like speed bumps. More roundabouts so our intersections are safer to get through.

You enjoy community led activities like painted rock hunting in reserves. There should be more parks, and they should be bigger. Make playgrounds awesome – more flying foxes, natural materials and park equipment for people with sensory processing issues. We need more seating and shaded areas in our parks and playgrounds. Add more drinking fountains, and places to fill up reusable water bottles in town centres and reserves.

You want great urban design with a lot of greenery in our towns. More gardening in our public gardens, and preference given to native trees and shrubs. Our towns should have clean air and less concrete. You’d like community gardens, public vegetable gardens, and fruit trees in public reserves. Towns should look good and have great character.

Tourism and visitor numbers are affecting you. You support tourism but you don't want uncontrolled visitor use or over commercialisation. You said we need good car parking to get cars off the road in tourist areas, and walkways to get people off the road. You want new recreation areas to be developed for freedom camping and carparking.

Honour iwi relationships with land and water, and ensure iwi and Māori have equal say. You don’t want to see fighting or bullying - be kind to one another. There’s no place in for antisocial behaviour here. There should be less vandalism and theft, and people and animals should be safe and cared for.

Water is a precious resource and we should reduce our water usage where we can. This might look like encouraging people to install grey water systems and people to install their own rainwater collection tanks. We should have a reliable drinking water supply regardless of the weather.

Young people need more activities and events designed for youth. They need to be engaged and involved in the community. We don’t want them to be bored - there is nothing to do around here once they leave school.

There should be more apprenticeships for young people and promotion of different career options. There isn’t enough work opportunities or employment options here. High speed internet means people can live in this area rather and work from home rather than live in the bigger cities.

You enjoy community events, including market days, music festivals and cultural events. You want to be able to continue these community events and fundraising initiatives like car washes and sausage sizzles without restrictions. You want inclusive and funded town promotion organisations. You’re keen to see more District events for families.

Drains need cleaning when we know a storm event is coming. We need to plan for climate change related issues like sea level rise, particularly on the Hauraki Plains, and we should be thinking long term. You’re concerned about flooding, and erosion on our coasts.

You want to see bigger and better pools, with better pool activities, like adult exercise classes. The pool toys should be in the pools more often and for longer. Pools should be open year-round and should have shade cover in the summer. Pools need to be well advertised and signposted.

You want more job training opportunities. There should be more people speaking Te Reo Māori. Libraries need more library books and learning programmes like Toddler Time. There should be more support for primary schools.

You want more and bigger skateparks, with different ranges of difficulty for all wheel play types, e.g. skateboards, scooters, and bikes. Get professional street art painted on our skateparks – graffiti doesn’t look good and the paint used to cover it is slippery for bikes.

You want shopping variety, with good quality shops. You’d prefer to shop locally than leave the District to get what you need. New business should be encouraged, particularly locally own business. Shops should be open on Sundays and shopping hours should be accessible for those working traditional work week.

People should have somewhere safe to live. There are families living in garages, tents, and motels. We have a housing shortage in the District – we need more rentals. You’d like more mixed housing. We need more subdivisions or improvements to make room for growth, housing shortages and larger family extension.

We want safe cycleways, footpaths, or shared paths so our kids can walk and bike to school safely. We need structures in place so that we can cross state highways safely. In busy tourist areas around the Hauraki Rail Trail we need marked walkways and cycle lanes on our roads to keep people off the road. Provide better links and extensions to Hauraki Rail Trail. Pedestrian access should be appropriate for wheelchairs and not uneven under foot. We need to monitor skateboards, scooters and mobility scooters on footpaths. Make our towns pedestrian friendly by restricting motor vehicle access to some parts.

You’d like bus shelters and seating. Public transport would reduce vehicle congestion and reduce our carbon footprint. There should be more community transport and any initiative in that arena should be supported.

You want more BMX and bike tracks. There should be more basketball courts and improved facilities for hockey, netball and rugby. The bocce patches at our reserves need to be well-maintained and well-used. You want fitness exercise equipment for adults in parks and reserves.

You’re concerned about our natural environment being damaged, and loss of biodiversity. You want less invasive plants and pests, with more native planting and control of predators. You love the Karangahake Gorge and our coastlines. Our rivers and waterways need to be protected and healthy, and you don’t want industry to negatively impact our natural environment. Protect conservation land or there won't be any left to protect.

Explain rural rates levels. You want community information to be displayed in controlled community noticeboards behind glass. You want costs of Council services to be charged fairly to those who benefit from them. There should be more communication outside of the internet and newspapers. You want thorough community consultation.